eBay Offers Glitch - Item Doesn't Ship To Your Location
I first reported on this longstanding glitch over a month ago, but it seems to have reared its ugly head again (still?)
Liz Morton
Frustrated sellers are reporting they are getting messages from buyers questioning why they don't ship to their location - when in fact they do. This is a technical issue specifically affecting Offers and it looks something like this:
Why am I being sent this offer if the item doesn't ship to me? 🧐 #techledreimagination @eBay @AskeBay @ValueAddedRS @unsuckEBAY @EcommerceBytes @eseller365 pic.twitter.com/GPx8xn46u8
— less than three records (@RecordsLess) August 6, 2021
In my previous report I noted it looks like this has been an ongoing intermittent issue since at least April 2020.
Given the sporadic nature of the issue, my guess is there may be a bug or server error somewhere within the Offers flow that intermittently "breaks" the communication or returns a null result for the seller's shipping location settings and the display just defaults to "doesn't ship to your location" as a sort of failsafe if it can't see the data to display the correct info.
However, this is just a guess on my part, eBay has not been forthcoming with exactly what is going on here.
eBay community staff have indicated this is a known technical issue that the tech teams had marked as resolved over a week ago, but now that they are receiving continued reports they are opening new tech tickets.
Several sellers brought this up in the weekly chat with eBay staff today with one seller pushing eBay to put out an official announcement about the issue.
ebay appears to be having ---again---a glitch with Seller Initiated Offers in which the ebay message to buyers is (erroneously) telling them that the seller does not ship to them. SIO is one of the better things ebay launched recently, but this glitch completely undermines its usefulness...and we are, what less than 2 weeks away from the start of Q4? Any estimated time to get this fixed?
Also, many sellers are probably sending out offers without even knowing this is happening....since we can't send an offer to that same watcher more than once, each offer we send is killing a sales opportunity. You guys really need to ANNOUNCE that this glitch is happening, so that sellers can either 1. refrain from sending offers till it is officially (and hopefully permanently fixed) or any offers we send need to include something like this:
PLEASE NOTE: If you are in the US, and this message states "This item does not ship to you"---that statement is incorrect, it is an ebay glitch. I ship to anywhere in the US. You should be able to accept this offer without any problem.
Q4 is nearly here. This needs to be fixed NOW.
I don't control whether or not an Announcement is made (that call is made several steps above me). Typically they are reserved for situations with large reach and larger impact. I have made sure this is reported and the feedback around transparency is shared. Thanks!
I appreciate Tyler's acknowledgement about the "feedback around transparency", but given the fact this glitch has been impacting many sellers at various times over an 18 month period - maybe it's time to consider it as having "large reach and larger impact"?
